As telephone companies migrate to higher bandwidth services including data and video offerings, the desire to add convenience or utilize technical advances in new and unique ways increases. VoIP is a term that has become well recognized recently and relates to methodologies for converting analog audio signals into digital data that may be transmitted over the Internet or other digital data transmission networks including, for example, enterprise intranet networks.
Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) has been in use for some time and, because of its relatively low operating frequencies, operates very compatibly with more recently introduced, concurrently provided, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. DSL service may be provided in a number of configurations that collectively have been designated as “xDSL” to denote all of the various forms. A more common type generally deployed to residential subscriber's premises carries the designation of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service.
More recently, DSL service has been proposed to be provided exclusively over the communications lines previously shared with POTS. This data without POTS (also sometimes referred to as “naked DSL”) continues to work well using the same communications lines previously shared with POTS.
In addition to the above, coaxial cable has been used for many years to bring media signals in the form of television programming to various premises both residential and commercial. More recently such coaxial cables have been employed to provide data services along with the previously supplied media programming.
Most recently, optical fiber has been deployed to these same residential and commercial locations with the promise of providing some or all of the services previously and currently provided by both copper lines and coaxial cables and providing such services while at the same time providing vastly increased bandwidth capabilities.
In view of the above mentioned issues involving the provision of various services at a subscriber premises, it would be desirable to have an electronics package that provides the subscriber with the option of continuing to use her premises wiring including copper and cable and to provide additional capabilities without having to install any additional in premises transmission medium. While various adapter configurations have been developed, no design has yet emerged that generally encompasses all of the desired characteristics, as hereafter presented in accordance with the present invention.